My head is completely full of ideas to write about: COP15 and the Great Debate; Lunch with the Danes; all the developments in the economy, health care legislation and financial reform. But right now all of us are a little overwhelmed with the finale of this trip.
We’ve been saying goodbye to people for almost a week now, and as each person leaves a part of the experience leaves with them. For the next 48 hours I’m going to stay away from the computer and just soak the last of it in. There will be time to write over the Holiday Break, and I’ll fill in those stories then, but for now, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Glædlig Jule og godt Nytår!
Because this blog is somewhat an encapsulation of my experience I should really share more about why the pace of my blogging has slowed dramatically. Simply put, school is kicking my butt. Due to the trajectory of the courses here, the vast majority of the work is backloaded towards the end of the semester. Here’s what my finals schedule looks like:
Strategic Risk Management: 15-page research paper due Nov 27th
Innovation Management: 30-page team business plan and 20-minute team presentation due December 7th
Advanced Corporate Finance: 4-hour closed book, closed note exam on December 11th
International Logistics Management: 15-page research paper due December 11th
Innovation Management: 15-page research paper due December 22nd
Needless to say, it’s a pretty brutal stretch through late November into December. A lot of research, a lot of writing, and a lot of studying for finance. All of which is to the good. I came here to learn, and the Finance program here is absolutely outstanding. But it’s also requiring a lot of extra time in the library to make sure I don’t fall behind. With trips coming up on Nov 19-22nd to Amsterdam and potentially in mid-December to Stockholm, the time is now to start knocking a lot of this work out. So unfortunately, I will not be able to post as much as I would like to, but I will still keep production up where I can.
One other piece of good news I’d like to share. I’ve been informally invited by CBS to attend “The Greatest Debate on Earth,” a meeting of the world’s top leaders at the COP15 Climate Change Conference. This will be an exceptional opportunity to hear many top officials from around the globe discuss climate change in a forum where the audience will be allowed to ask questions. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to ask a question. So I put the question out to you my readers: What should I ask and to whom?
Those damn scientists are at it again. One of the major arguments against implementation of energy reform and climate change legislation is that putting together such a system would impose a huge drain on our economy. Guess what? That drain is already happening.
The National Research Council recently released a report estimating the hidden costs of our petroleum and coal-based energy system. The NRC puts the quantifiable costs at $120B. And yes, that’s a B, not an M, as in $120 billion. These are just the measurable costs. According to the report
($120B is a) number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize.
I’m not qualified to get into a deep policy discussion around the merits of a cap-and-trade system vs. a straight carbon tax. Nor am I ready to dig into other policies and incentive systems that could mitigate the problem, but it’s clear that the economic argument against action isn’t nearly as strong as it once was. Will effective energy reform legislation cost a lot of money? Yes. But according to this report we’re already paying a good chunk of that in hidden costs that show up in our health care bills right now. And that doesn’t even include the unquantifiable damage done to the environment and our addiction to Middle Eastern oil.
That’s roughly the headline of an exciting new article from The Daily Climate linking green energy and economic growth in the United States. The thrust of the story revolves around the use of “brownfields,” dirty, polluted and abandoned industrial sites for the development of solar and wind farms. According to story, the EPA in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Lab have identified enough “brownfield” acreage to produce 950,000 MegaWatts of energy. That’s a lot, as in enough energy to power the United States in 2007.
“In the next decade there’s going to be a lot of renewable energy built, and all that has to go somewhere,” said Jessica Goad, an energy and climate change policy fellow for The Wilderness Society. “We don’t want to see these industrial facilities placed on land that’s pristine. We love the idea of brownfields for renewable energy development because it relieves the (development) pressure on undisturbed places.”
Many of these brownfields are in areas that have been hardest hit by the recession, Michigan, Pennsylvania and the Mountain West. These are places that desperately need jobs and economic development if they are going to survive in the 21st century. This could be their opportunity.
Yesterday evening, I had a brief conversation with one of my classmates (hi Lindsay) about this blog and how my writing has evolved since I came to Copenhagen two months ago. She noted that my writing, particularly on health care and climate change took a definitive liberal slant. I understand where the opinion comes from. Has my writing begun to reflect more of my personal beliefs? Probably. But I wonder how much of that has to do me being here in Europe.
As I’ve stated many times on this blog, climate change is taken as fact here, while universal health care is taken for granted. The Danes I speak to don’t really understand modern conservatism in America. They don’t understand how we can deny something (global warming) that is happening before our very eyes, or how we can allow 50 million of our citizens to go without health care. I’ve also heard a lot of laughter at the comments about Obama earning the “socialist” and “Communist” labels from his more extreme critics.
I will grant that living in Copenhagen has probably moved my writing slightly to the left, but I also think it’s moved my writing more in alignment with the rest of the world, and with the business community at large. The rest of the world is deep in a conversation about how to limit carbon emissions while minimizing the economic impact. My blog post yesterday regarding Apple leaving the Chamber of Commerce only serves to highlight that trend. The future of business is green: green energy for green money. America must become more aggressive in implementing a green-centric business growth strategy if it wants to maintain its place as a global economic leader. Denying the existence of global warming is no place to start.
Over the course of this blog, I’ve tried my best to write objectively, and to insert my opinion and analysis where I thought it could add value to the discussion. But I’m always open to airing other ideas and viewpoints. If you disagree with my writing, let me know, and I’ll publish your dissent here on the blog. Or you can e-mail me personally with your perspectives, counter-arguments, criticism or praise. My inbox is always open.
A few days ago, I posted about Apple’s business model potentially setting it up for failure down the road. However, in the here and now, Apple is still running at the head of the pack. Two days ago, Apple became one of the first major technology giants to quit the Chamber of Commerce over its climate change policy. Key passage:
In a letter to the Chamber’s president, Apple Vice President Catherine Novelli wrote, “Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.” As a result, Novelli said, “we have decided to resign our membership effective immediately.”
As climate change becomes a larger and larger threat to our economic sustainability, I find it completely unsurprising that large, multi-national corporations are taking a more progressive stance on the issue. Climate change will have an unprecedented impact economically, and those firms that take a more aggressive stance in combating global warming will reap the benefits.
First, they will be well-positioned from a branding and corporate social responsibility standpoint. Consumers are becoming ever more conscious and informed about which companies protect and which companies pollute the envrionment. Apple already has this component of the equation down in spades, due in large part to moves like this.
More importantly though, becoming more proactive on climate change has a huge strategic benefit, namely the emergence of the green economy. Who were the other three companies to leave the Chamber of Commerce? Energy companies: PG&E, PNM and Exelon. There is no doubt that the future of the global economy is green. Earlier today, a report was released estimating that China’s green-tech related economy could top $1 trillion… in 2013, four years from now. The race is on for position to capture a share of that immense market.
From December 7-18th, Copenhagen will be hosting the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Fifteen of the largest nations in the world will be meeting in Denmark to discuss the Kyoto treaty, and how to keep momentum on blunting anthropogenic-related global temperature increases. This event marks a coming together of the US, China, Japan and several European nations. As I mentioned in my previous post, climate change is a huge issue in Europe, and I’ll be trying to highlight this where I can, as well as blogging about the conference later on in December.
For now though, I wanted to quickly point out this article from CNN. Here are the first grafs:
World leaders converge Tuesday in New York to focus on climate change, with the clock ticking down toward a summit this year in Denmark, where a global climate change pact is to be signed.
Negotiations for the global pact have stalled, and Tuesday’s gathering is aimed at jump-starting those talks.
Chinese President Hu Jintao, U.S. President Barack Obama, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Rwandan President Paul Kagame are among the world leaders expected to speak Tuesday.
Roundtables are also planned, all with the overarching and generally accepted goal of limiting the rise of Earth’s temperature to within 2 degrees Fahrenheit above its temperature before the industrial revolution.
In particular, the world will be focusing on the United States, who declined to participate in the original Kyoto Protocol, as well as China, who has quickly become one of the world’s largest polluters.
